Charles Darwin

“ We shall immediately see that horses occasionally exhibit a tendency to become striped over a large part of their bodies; and as we know that stripes readily pass into spots and cloudy marks in the varieties of the domestic cat and in several feline species—even the cubs of the uniformly-coloured lion being spotted with dark marks on a lighter ground—we may suspect that the dappling of the horse, which has been noticed by some authors with surprise, is a modification or vestige of a tendency to become striped. ”

“ Nevertheless the similarity in the most distinct breeds in their general range of colour, in their dappling, and in the occasional appearance, especially in duns, of leg-stripes and of double or triple shoulder-stripes, taken together, indicate the probability of the descent of all the existing races from a single, dun-coloured, more or less striped, primitive stock, to which our horses still occasionally revert. ”

“ In this country, and generally in Central Europe, though the ass is by no means uniform in appearance, it has not given rise to distinct breeds like those of the horse. This may probably be accounted for by the animal being kept chiefly by poor persons, who do not rear large numbers, nor carefully match and select the young. For, as we shall see in a future chapter, the ass can with ease be greatly improved in size and strength by careful selection, combined no doubt with good food ”

“ It seems that not very long ago a wild breed of dun-coloured horses with a spinal stripe was preserved in the royal parks in Prussia. I hear from Hungary that the inhabitants of that country look at the duns with a spinal stripe as the aboriginal stock, and so it is in Norway. Dun-coloured ponies are not rare in the mountainous parts of Devonshire, Wales, and Scotland, where the aboriginal breed would have had the best chance of being preserved. ”

“ I have seen similar marks on the forehead of a fully grown, fallow-dun, cob-like horse, having a conspicuous spinal stripe, and with its front legs well barred. In Norway the colour of the native horse or pony is dun, varying from almost cream-colour to dark mouse-dun; and an animal is not considered purely bred unless it has the spinal and leg stripes. ”

“ The small size of the ass in England and Northern Europe is apparently due far more to want of care in breeding than to cold; for in Western India, where the ass is used as a beast of burden by some of the lower castes, it is not much larger than a Newfoundland dog, "being generally not more than from twenty to thirty inches high." [41]
The ass varies greatly in colour; and its legs, especially the fore-legs, both in England and other countries—for instance, in China—are occasionally barred transversely more plainly than those of dun-coloured horses. ”

“ But as several species and varieties of the horse existed [14] during the later tertiary periods, and as Rütimeyer found differences in the size and form of the skull in the earliest known domesticated horses, [15] we ought not to feel sure that all our breeds have descended from a single species. As we see that the savages of North and South America easily reclaim the feral horses, there is no improbability in savages in various quarters of the world having domesticated more than one native species or natural race. No aboriginal or truly wild horse is positively known now to exist ”

“ Horses which are of a yellow colour with white mane and tail, and which are sometimes called duns, I have never seen with stripes. [34] From reasons which will be apparent in the chapter on Reversion, I have endeavoured, but with poor success, to discover whether duns, which are so much oftener striped than other coloured horses, are ever produced from the crossing of two horses, neither of which are duns. Most persons to whom I have applied believe that one parent must be a dun; and it is generally asserted, that, when this is the case, the dun-colour and the stripes are strongly inherited. ”

“ One case has fallen under my own observation of a foal from a black mare by a bay horse, which when fully grown was a dark fallow-dun and had a narrow but plain spinal stripe. Hofacker [36] gives two instances of mouse-duns (Mausrapp) being produced from two parents of different colours and neither duns. I have also endeavoured with little success to find out whether the stripes are generally plainer or less plain in the foal than in the adult horse. Colonel Poole informs me that, as he believes, "the stripes are plainest when the colt is first foaled ”

“ We may therefore conclude that, whether or not the various existing breeds of the horse have proceeded from one or more aboriginal stocks, yet that a great amount of change has resulted from the direct action of the conditions of life, and probably a still greater amount from the long-continued selection by man of slight individual differences. ”

“ The horse can flourish under intense heat as well as under intense cold, for he is known to come to the highest perfection, though not attaining a large size, in Arabia and northern Africa. Much humidity is apparently more injurious to the horse than heat or cold. In the Falkland Islands, horses suffer much from the dampness ”

“ Every one knows how small and rugged the ponies are on the Northern islands and on the mountains of Europe. Corsica and Sardinia have their native ponies; and there were, [17] or still are, on some islands on the coast of Virginia, ponies like those of the Shetland Islands, which are believed to have originated through exposure to unfavourable conditions. ”

“ Waterton records [23] the case of a mare which produced successively three foals without tails; so that a tailless race might have been formed like the tailless races of dogs and cats. A Russian breed of horses is said to have frizzled hair, and Azara [24] relates that in Paraguay horses are occasionally born, but are generally destroyed, with hair like that on the head of a negro; and this peculiarity is transmitted even to half-breeds: it is a curious case of correlation that such horses have short manes and tails, and their hoofs are of a peculiar shape like those of a mule. ”

“ The Kattywar horses are often fifteen or sixteen hands in height, and are well but lightly built. They are of all colours, but the several kinds of duns prevail; and these are so generally striped, that a horse without stripes is not considered pure. Colonel Poole believes that all the duns have the spinal stripe, the leg-stripes are generally present, and he thinks that about half the horses have the shoulder-stripe ”

“ In the northern parts of America the horses, descended from those introduced by the Spanish conquerors of Mexico, have the same habit, as have the native bisons, but not so the cattle introduced from Europe. ”

“ D. Forbes, who has had excellent opportunities of comparing the horses of Spain with those of South America, informs me that the horses of Chile, which have lived under nearly the same conditions as their progenitors in Andalusia, remain unaltered, whilst the Pampas horses and the Puno ponies are considerably modified. There can be no doubt that horses become greatly reduced in size and altered in appearance by living on mountains and islands ”

“ Fig. 1.—Dun Devonshire Pony, with shoulder, spinal, and leg stripes. This tendency in the horse to become striped is in several respects an interesting fact. Horses of all colours, of the most diverse breeds, in various parts of the world, often have a dark stripe extending along the spine, from the mane to the tail; but this is so common that I need enter into no particulars. [30] Occasionally horses are transversely barred on the legs, chiefly on the under side ”

“ HORSE.—differences in the breeds—individual variability of—direct effects of the conditions of life—can withstand much cold—breeds much modified by selection—colours of the horse—dappling—dark stripes on the spine, legs, shoulders, and forehead—dun-coloured horses most frequently striped—stripes probably due to reversion to the primitive state of the horse. ASSES.—breeds of—colour of—leg- and shoulder- stripes—shoulder-stripes sometimes absent, sometimes forked. The history of the Horse is lost in antiquity. ”

“ I have seen cream-coloured, light-dun and mouse-dun horses dappled, which I mention because it has been stated (Martin, 'History of the Horse,' p. 134) that duns are never dappled. Martin (p. 205) refers to dappled asses. In 'The Farrier' (London, 1828, pp. 453, 455) there are some good remarks on the dappling of horses; and likewise in Col. Hamilton Smith on 'The Horse.'↑ Some details are given in 'The Farrier,' 1828, pp. 452, 455. One of the least ponies I ever saw, of the colour of a mouse, had a conspicuous spinal stripe. ”